Written by
Vachel Lindsay |
NO man should stand before the moon
To make sweet song thereon,
With dandified importance,
His sense of humor gone.
Nay, let us don the motley cap,
The jester's chastened mien,
If we would woo that looking-glass
And see what should be seen.
O mirror on fair Heaven's wall,
We find there what we bring.
So, let us smile in honest part
And deck our souls and sing.
Yea, by the chastened jest alone
Will ghosts and terrors pass,
And fays, or suchlike friendly things,
Throw kisses through the glass.
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
as the landscape falls away
the hawthorn in its gnarly fashion
is content to stand alone
berries (the very tint of passion)
that birds are wont to feed upon
bloodstain the shortened day
a stubborn tree that speaks
of crusty age - its thorns alert
to any too-spirited invasion
who comes (it seems to say) gets hurt
not those birds with juicy beaks
insects swarm – by invitation
come may though – winter fading
may tree with its prickly pride
sprouts white in prim rejoicing
hunches around at eastertide
spry uncle with (brightly voicing)
maids and suchlike masquerading
when hedged in (deprived of pique)
its softer nature greenly oozing
it’s host to children’s fingers
(their tasty bread and cheesing)
first name means strength in greek
one of nature’s best harbingers
many names to match its guises
whitethorn quickthorn ske **** hag
rich too in its folklore listings
much belies its tetchy tag
its wry wood (tangled twistings)
pleurisy-cure a book advises
old men have a hawthorn look
pretend to a rough vernacular
deny once-selves gentle as fairies
wince at their own spectacular
maydays (wistful gobbledegook)
as the young feed off their berries
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Written by
Badger Clark |
One time, 'way back where the year marks fade,
God said: "I see I must lose my West,
The prettiest part of the world I made,
The place where I've always come to rest,
For the White Man grows till he fights for bread
And he begs and prays for a chance to spread.
"Yet I won't give all of my last retreat;
I'll help him to fight his long trail through,
But I'll keep some land from his field and street
The way that it was when the world was new.
He'll cry for it all, for that's his way,
And yet he may understand some day."
And so, from the painted Bad Lands, 'way
To the sun-beat home of the 'Pache kin,
God stripped some places to sand and clay
And dried up the beds where the streams had been.
He marked His reserves with these plain signs
And stationed His rangers to guard the lines.
Then the White Man came, as the East growed old,
And blazed his trail with the wreck of war.
He riled the rivers to hunt for gold
And found the stuff he was lookin' for;
Then he trampled the Injun trails to ruts
And gashed through the hills with railroad cuts.
He flung out his barb-wire fences wide
And plowed up the ground where the grass was high.
He stripped off the trees from the mountain side
And ground out his ore where the streams run by,
Till last came the cities, with smoke and roar,
And the White Man was feelin' at home once more.
But Barrenness, Loneliness, suchlike things
That gall and grate on the White Man's nerves,
Was the rangers that camped by the bitter springs
And guarded the lines of God's reserves.
So the folks all shy from the desert land,
'Cept mebbe a few that kin understand.
There the world's the same as the day 'twas new,
With the land as clean as the smokeless sky
And never a noise as the years have flew,
But the sound of the warm wind driftin' by;
And there, alone, with the man's world far,
There's a chance to think who you really are.
And over the reach of the desert bare,
When the sun drops low and the day wind stills,
Sometimes you kin almost see Him there,
As He sits alone on the blue-gray hills,
A-thinkin' of things that's beyond our ken
And restin' Himself from the noise of men.
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